Combat Boots and Hand-Me-Downs
by The Tox
Summary: DISCONTINUED! Eren, whose life has been a stale, listless existence without his best friend, has his worldview shattered when two years later, a stranger in the guise of Armin returns. He hopes to find Armin somewhere under the black leather and piercings, but when Armin's very eyes are ice on lake instead of open sea, how good are his chances? AU.
1. Prologue

_Prologue_

"Call me Harlot," were the only words spoken before Eren was drawn into an irresistible kiss. Then it was all lips against skin against skin against stupid fucking clothes, and they pulled each other step by step outdoors, away from the raging party, away from the asphalt street, away to the murky and damp woods where trees made for makeshift walls to slam each other against, where moss made for makeshift mattresses to fuck into.

Harlot was wild and experienced, and Eren was only able to react. When Harlot bit him, he bit back, and when Harlot started to tear at his clothes, he tried doing the same. Late spring made for light clothing, but Harlot wore a warm leather jacket, tight black pants and combat boots, and Eren had to give way for this mysterious stranger to strip himself, in this guise of darkness. The nearest streetlamp just cast a slimmer of light their way, but Eren's imagination ran wild with the sliver of skin he saw when Harlot dropped his jacket, revealing the midriff top he wore.

Before he had a chance to gather his thoughts, Harlot's hot mouth was on his neck, a vampire biting at his skin and sucking until his knees went weak. He grabbed Harlot by his shoulders and pulled him away to regain his strength, and then returned the favour, pushing Harlot until his back was against the tree, and Eren's mouth was his, sucking at his lips, tugging at Harlot's lip piercing with his teeth until the other made an erotic, whining sound.

He was loud. With every action Eren took, trying to pull down his pants, rubbing his thigh against the bulge between Harlot's legs, the other would moan shamelessly, as if the idea of getting caught was more thrilling than Eren himself. Intoxicated on the alcohol from the party and the taste of Harlot's body, Eren let it be, let it affect him in the best of ways.

Never before had he seen someone like Harlot here. Shiganshina, the modest town, free from disasters and news alike, contained only the normal, only the unambitious. The parties always had the same people, and never involved the broken furniture horror stories of parents told of.

Yet today, Harlot had been there. Harlot, in his black clothes and piercing and half-shaven head, with those dangerous blue eyes, the eyeliner and the heavy shoes. Harlot, who carried a knife in his pocket, who wore a midriff top only Eren got to see. He hadn't told anyone where he came from, and he hadn't told anyone but Eren to call him by that name. Spellbound by a stranger, how could Eren have done anything but willingly be tugged along to see what else Harlot could offer?

Eren had never before been with a man, and he had never felt the need to. Harlot's fingers, with the dangerously sharp, black painted nails, wrapped around his cock, got him thinking along different lanes.

In this environment for the wild animals, they fucked without proper lube or condom, and bled onto the abused ground. Eren's naked back was claimed and torn by those sharp nails, and his neck was evident of a Harlot's hunger. Harlot rode him until he came, and then milked his cock of semen, cleaned it off blood, with an open mouth and a pierced tongue.

When the deed was done, when Harlot jerked himself off and came over Eren's chest, straddling his abdomen, he moaned "Eren," with his striking blue eyes closed. Even in the night, they had shone like a thousand little stars.

It didn't connect immediately. Harlot started lapping up his own cum, cleaning Eren, like a cat. Delirious from the high peak of pleasure, Eren's mind was clouded, and less so than the name moaned, he only really noticed how the stud in Harlot's tongue was scraped over his nipple, and how it made his cock grow.

Within minutes, he had released a small load into Harlot's mouth, and was panting and dizzy again. Harlot tucked both of them back into their underwear, but they remained nude in every other way, as he covered Eren's body with his own, and rested his head, the shaved side, against a beating heart.

Too hot to notice the twigs and pines under his back, Eren simply wrapped his arm around the mysterious stranger who had enticed him so. Part of him wanted to keep Harlot there with him forever, to do this again and again and again, but the other part wanted Harlot to leave, to go back to whatever wonderful and exciting place he came from, and take Eren along with him.

Minutes turned to an hour, and Eren woke up, unaware that he had even fallen asleep. But Harlot was still there, still resting against him, still peering at his face with those blue oddly familiar eyes of him. Dawn had begun to filter through the forest ceiling, and the brief nap had sobered him up to this point of recognition. His dreams, quickly forgotten, had involved Harlot's eyes for sure, but he was certain, as he looked straight into them again, that they were more familiar than that.

"How'd you know my name?" he asked without realizing it, a subconscious reflect in his quest for answers.

Harlot had a round nose and a slight frame, his eyebrows thick and natural, his lips full but dull in colour. These traits were associated, in Eren's mind, with someone completely different.

"I'm surprised you don't know mine," Harlot retorted. "Don't you remember me?"

Eren remembered a best friend with a bob haircut, second-hand clothes and pudgy baby-fat cheeks. He remembered a dorky and diminutive boy always clutching his books, holding their words closer to his soul than anything anyone ever told him. He remembered a best friend named Armin whose eyes were the ocean itself, whose mouth spun dreams this town would never comprehend, whose grandfather made him move two years prior, whose letters and emails and phone calls had never reached Eren even once.

He didn't remember Harlot. But his mind connecting the dots made his old friend turned stranger smirk.

"Hi Eren," Armin said. "It's been a while."


	2. Chapter One: 72 Hours Remaining

_The events of the prologue takes place two years after the events in this chapter. In other words, this chapter takes place before Armin has moved; before he has become "Harlot". Enjoy the combination of backstory fluff and angst._

* * *

**Chapter One**

**72 Hours Remaining**

Two teenagers shouldn't fit in the single bed, but somehow, limb entwined with limb, bodies tangled into each other, Eren and Armin, best friends for life, made it work. They snored into each other's ears, drooled onto each other's chests, and kicked and twisted and made a mess out of the sheets. Caught in an embrace they never wanted to end, they slept like that more often than not, even on the weekdays when school called for them to wake at seven.

It wasn't a problem for Dr. Yeager, Eren's widowed father. He could as easily afford breakfast for four instead of three, and when Armin stayed over, the house was warm. Though a growing boy, Armin ate little, and never caused them trouble.

When the alarms didn't wake them, like this day, it was Eren's foster-sister who knocked on his bedroom door loudly enough to echo through the house, and instantly disrupted their slumber.

"Time for breakfast," she called, with the decency to wait on the other side of the door.

"Thank you Mikasa, we'll be right there," Armin called back, voice thick with sleep, while Eren grumbled; "go die" into the sheets. It took Armin many tugs at his pyjama shirt until he finally rose.

Armin had his own drawer with clothes in Eren's room, filled with the worn and torn garments he didn't really mind wearing, even though they were hand-me-downs or handmade. Eren watched him put on grey jeans which had once been blue, and reach for a knitted green shirt. Before he could don it, Eren intervened, wrapping his arms around Armin's naked torso and pressing him back against his own bare chest.

"Borrow something of mine," he mumbled into Armin's ear. "Looks better on you."

"Eren, what if I sleep at home tonight and I forget it before the move?" Armin asked. Eren's heart broke, bit by bit, whenever that word was uttered.

"Don't," he said. "Don't sleep there. Three days, right? Then three nights here. And I want you to keep whatever I give you so you don't forget…" He hugged Armin closer. "So you don't forget me."

Armin pulled himself free just so he could spin around and hug his friend just as tightly. "Eren, don't be ridiculous. I'll never forget you. And we still have each other's phone numbers and emails, and if it comes down to handwritten letters, then that's how we'll do it." At his height he easily pressed a kiss to Eren's solar plexus. "I'll find a way. I'd never give you up."

At school, they were called every name in the book behind their backs. If they so much as touched, anyone walking past would cough out "fag", and Eren would get into detention for fighting. But they had never viewed their relationship as such. They were intimate enough to share a bed and hug, barely dressed. They could kiss each other's chests or necks or hands, and stroke absentmindedly at each other's naked skin. They weren't a couple, though. At least not to their knowledge.

Mikasa waited in the kitchen with toast and jam, and brewing vanilla tea. Seeing Armin wear one of Eren's shirts, those t-shirts with abstract, skater motif, didn't even warrant her to blink. She poured the tea for her and Armin while Eren went to get a glass of apple juice, and they ate like a family would, with Armin hogging the newspapers, Mikasa reading a book for a school assignment, and Eren steadily looking from his toast to Armin, and back again.

That was their life. That was how it was supposed to be. And that would be gone, alongside Armin, within three days.

On their way to school, Armin was gripping Eren's hand, but not as tightly as Eren gripped his back. Mikasa was walking slightly ahead, a natural guard. When she was with, no one bothered them, and unbeknownst to the boys, she had made an oath to protect them these last three days. Wishing she could keep it up for even longer.

Armin and Eren had most of the same classes, but when they were alone, their classmates often did not bother harassing them. The weak link, Armin, would face the worst of it, but that day he was only given a few "good riddance" comments, from those who had heard the rumours of his move. On Saturday he would be out of their lives forever, so they left him alone, in their odd showing of solidarity.

They had no other friends. Before Mikasa had been adopted, it had only been Eren and Armin against the world, and since long, they had decided to not let it bother them. At age seven, they had made a promise to each other, sworn by mixing blood and a handshake of saliva, a promise to leave the town when they were adults, just the two of them, and travel to wherever they wished. Three years before that dream could come into fruition, however, this happened, a grim reminder of reality's cruelty storming through their planned out and unexpected life.

After school they walked straight back to Eren and Mikasa's house, where Mikasa went to study, and Armin and Eren decided to have a movie marathon. In the middle of the week, they popped popcorn and cuddled under a blanket, watching all six Star Wars movies and taking turns reciting lines. Eren liked Han Solo, but Armin was always an Obi-Wan fan. Mikasa liked Luke, and she joined them for the original trilogy, though she sat on an armchair, rather than on the couch with them.

At ten in the evening they ate dinner, making homemade pizza in the oven and pressing their own orange juice to complete the feeling, and at eleven they were playing Halo 3 until Dr. Yeager got home and sent three restless teenagers to bed. Like the night before, Armin and Eren spoke until the late hours, explaining dreams they'd had, mentioning trivia about all of the places in the world they had studied up on, and practicing French, Japanese and Spanish from what they had learnt from school and anime.

Eventually Armin dozed off, his soft head resting against Eren's chests as his legs clung to him like a koala. Eren cried into his hand while stroking that soft blonde hair with his other, and decided to not tell of it the next morning.

Thursday passed without them realizing it. After school, they went for a long walk, the sort they had enjoyed when they were younger, even though everything in Shiganshina looked the same. Surrounded by a coniferous forest, it was a landscape of mirrors, the same pine tree greeting them wherever they went. A shallow lake north of Eren's street, where children swam during summers, and a riverbank where teens held barbeques, were the only real changes in the ecology of the town. Any walk off the road was bound to lead them past the riverbank, past the lake, and through the trails in the forest.

"Remember our tree house?" Armin asked when they passed by the forest behind one of the identical terrace house streets. When his parents had been alive, Armin had lived there, and they had spent just as much time together at his home, as they did at Eren's.

"I remember me being excited about building it, and I remember you drawing up a blue print and freaking out when I didn't follow it," Eren chuckled, leaning his body towards Armin's. Roots and stone made for an uneven trail to follow, but they appreciated nature, and always had.

"And I remember you falling out of it because you didn't want to build the rail I had designed," Armin said, smiling gently for himself.

"And I remember you panicking and giving me mouth to mouth because I had fallen, even though I was awake."

Armin flushed. "I was 10, and I had just read about how to do that. I thought I was going to save you!"

Eren chuckled, and he pulled Armin into a side-embrace. "Do you think that counts as a first kiss?" he asked into Armin's hair, blowing at the blonde strands with his breath. He felt Armin's heart beat quicker, but they didn't look at each other's faces to see the redness both showed.

"Well, there's hardly anything innately romantic in saving someone's life. In fact, I think there's a problem when it's romanticized to that degree…"

Rolling his eyes, stroking Armin's hair and letting go, Eren smirked and said. "It wasn't exactly a matter of life or death though. I scraped my leg and hurt my ass. I landed on that dick-looking pine." They resumed walking. "But I think… I mean, for example, if you sacrifice yourself for someone you love… isn't that a bit romantic?"

"It's cliché."

"A romantic cliché though. You know I'm right."

Armin sighed, raising his hands in surrender, the topic dropped just like that, and quickly changing into something different, just like the scenery. Their steps took them to another asphalt street of another neighbourhood of town, so their journey brought them back to Eren's villa.

Grisha dined with them that eve, and never once did he inquire about Armin's move, much to everyone's relief. The discussion fell upon oddities and quirks of human behaviour, a topic Armin delighted in discussing, while Eren and Mikasa just got in a word or two, if they tried.

But they were content simply listening.

In Eren's bedroom, where two school bags leaned against the wall side by side, where the blinds were closed but the curtains pulled aside, where two boys had played soldiers and warriors with carbon swords, Armin and Eren stayed up late again. Above the bed hung a map of the world, a gift from Armin for Eren's eleventh birthday, pricked full of holes from pins. Pins with red buttons used to mark the places Eren wanted to go, while the colour of blue had been Armin's, but they had switched a system just the other year, at Eren's suggestion. Now blue marked the places they _had_to visit, no matter what, while red where mere suggestions, if they had the time for it.

The night stand lamp was turned to face the map, so that they may watch it. Lying on Eren's arm, stretched around him, Armin's wide eyes scanned each red pin.

"Let's change them," he said. "Every pin should be blue."

Eren's gaze fell to his friend, and his eyebrows sank, sorrow playing across his features.

"Armin…"

"There shouldn't be any priorities," Armin said. "We should go everywhere…" His voice broke just as Eren pulled him to his chest, hugging him tightly as the tears began to fall.

There was nothing Eren hated more than hearing Armin weep, but he could do naught but hold him, stroke his hair, and hope for it to pass. In three years they would be turning eighteen, and they would be reunited. That was the only hope they could keep.

In the middle of the night, Eren woke to see Armin change the pins with blue ones. Feigning sleep, he pretended to not notice, once Armin laid back down. Come morning, Eren looked up at the map again and saw that one pin was still red, and his heart broke for his friend, when he saw that the pin marked Stohess. The city Armin would be moving to tomorrow.

Following school on Friday, where their classmates were obligated to feign sorrow at Armin's departure, they walked home to Armin's. Herman Arlert, grandfather, custody holder, devil incarnated, was out when they got there, letting them invade the unwelcoming two room apartment alone.

Once, Eren remembered the house being filled with greenery and books. Now, the plants had been thrown out, and the books packed into the towers of cardboard boxes. The house in Stohess was pre-furnished, so everything from the antique armchairs to the tables Armin's father had crafted years ago would be left and sold and forgotten.

"Pack what you need," Herman had told his grandson, and given him one box to fit it all in. The small alcove which was Armin's room contained barely above what the box could contain, as it was.

Mostly books, atlases and guides to the corners of the world, filled the shelves over the futon which was Armin's bed. At the end of the room were two binders full of loose papers, and the bottom drawer contained nothing but notebooks filled with mad scribbling and masterful penmanship.

Together, they carefully put each and every book into the box, reminiscing about the older copies and excitedly speaking of the newer additions to the collection. Armin had known how to read and write when Eren was illiterate, and at six years old he had been a fine storyteller, reading all of the fairytales and unfairytales Eren suggested.

Finding the old notebooks in the drawer brought with a smell of old lead and childhood. Flipping through the pages, Eren remembered all of the tales detailed there, written by Armin on his request. They were stories of brave knights and dragons, giants and princes in distress. As a child, Eren had come up with the wildest plots, the most unexpected twists, and the most outrageous continuity errors. As a child, Armin had marveled at his friend's creativity, and he had written it down with his imaginary quill, naming the stories as legends. They had gathered their parents to perform, Armin reading and Eren acting, and after each show, they had been given cookies and applause.

"_I'll devour them all_," fifteen year old Eren repeated seven year old Eren's dialogue. "_Humanity will feast on the giants_!"

Armin chuckled, and he read the description aloud. "_General Yeager said those words. He travelled over the city like Spiderman. His friends followed, but they were not as amazing. They died, and general Yeager became angry_."

"_I'll have my revenge!_" Eren read dramatically, arm slung around Armin's shoulder.

"_Then, he saw that one friend lived. It was his best friend Armout_!" They both started laughing when they reached that part, so hard their stomachs ached. It seemed like ages since they had laughed like that, without restraint on themselves. Leaning against each other for support, their laughter persisted until it became a never ending cycle.

The sound of the hall door opening was the only thing which made them stop. Gone was joy, as the old man was present. Without even seeing him, all of the excitement, all of the memories, all of the wonders of imagination and nostalgia had disappeared from the world, and left in staleness they packed everything down, book by book, paper by paper, without so much as saying a word.

Within minutes they were done and within minutes they hurried to the hallway. They narrowly avoided Herman seeing them and slipped out unnoticed, travelling with numb steps over paralyzed ground, hands not even touching, lips not even trembling. It was in time for dinner when they reached the large villa with the caring father and protective sister.

The third night was the last. Eren's arm was wrapped around Armin's waist and he said that they shouldn't sleep. Wasting time dreaming during this final time of sweet reality would be pain unlike all other.

So they watched some anime and they played some games and they read some books out loud and they dozed off in front of the TV. At four, when Armin kicked the bowl of Cheetos and the sound woke them, was the first time they spoken truly all day.

"I am going to miss you," Eren said. Seemingly redundant, but they had roundabout ways of telling of their feelings. Occasionally, stating the obvious was only way they would ever understand each other's hearts.

"Eren…" Armin bit his lip, and he buried his face in Eren's chest. "I am… I am going to be so miserable! I have nothing without you, Eren…"

He cried and he was held and he was consoled and he was kissed. Their lips, touching in their first kiss, or maybe second, as their breaths slowed. Girls and boys in class did this readily with each other, and their taunts and sneers told that they assumed the same of Eren and Armin. Yet this kiss was the first with intent, a wordless seal of their adoration.

Romance was left out of the equation, same as lust, as their kiss deepened and tongues met. Pure desperation, grief, regret and anguish filled their hearts, same as their mouths. Sloppily kissing each other into oblivion, the taste mattered little, the sofa underneath them equal to a hellish fire they were banished into.

Early the next morning, Eren walked Armin to his home. Mikasa had greeted them in the hall, even though the hours were early, and she had presented Armin with a gift in the shape of a small silver brooch, with two interloping wings, a white and a blue, just larger than a nail.

After giving one to Armin, she had presented one just like it to Eren, and then showed a third one clasping onto her red scarf. Armin had hugged her tightly, and felt her tremble, until the moment he was pulled away from her, told by Eren that they had to go, even though the words were venom at the reason.

The kiss was never mentioned. Nothing of value, nothing but idiotic optimism they couldn't take to heart, was uttered at all. Just three years, both boys tried telling themselves and each other. In three years, they would become legal adults, and free. But all they could think about was the fact that this was the last time they could hold each other's hands in that time.

Herman Arlert had hired muscle to carry down the boxes, frail as he and his grandson both were. Once they reached Armin's street, the truck was already loaded, and Herman sat in his car, honking when he spotted them.

Armin was shaking, and his arms flew around Eren's neck one last time, and they wanted to never let go as they said their _farewells_ and their _we'll speak soons_ and their _I'll miss yous_. And then reality tore Armin apart, tore him from Eren's hold, and his feet were dragging across the ground until he reached the car. On the pavement, that misty morning, Eren looked at the car and waved, as it started up. The truck and the car drove towards the mist, and when they disappeared, Eren dashed out into the empty street and chased it through the white nothing.

It was nowhere to be seen, and he couldn't reach it in time, no matter how far he ran and how quickly his legs moved. He stopped only to catch his breath, and cry out in agony, his cry loud enough to echo through the town. But not loud enough to reach his best friend, as the clock had stopped ticking, and their last 72 hours were up.


End file.
